Inspired by the life and work of the late anthropologist Nancy Abelmann (1959–2016), this essay reflects upon public evocations of human vulnerability as central to understanding recent cultural phenomena and political transformations leading up to and during the Candlelight Revolution in South Korea. In this regard, how did the color vivid yellow come to define both spaces of protest and markers of dissident identity? Considering the prevalence of yellow ribbons, yellow balloons, yellow butterflies, and yellow paper lifeboats, what does it mean for such objects to have been circulated and recirculated in layered metaphorical assemblages that constituted new forms of public memory and new practices of political mobilization? This article addresses both the massive, peaceful Candlelight protests of 2016–17 that took place in downtown Seoul and the decade-long peace movement centered on Jeju Island's Gangjeong Village in order to theorize a vital politics of fragility that has imbued influential narratives, activist coalitions, and the material culture of protest in South Korea.

Attributing revolutionary potential to new international communications technology, notably the internet, is not new. On a global scale, similar ideas emerged in the mid nineteenth century in relation to government-subsidized mail steamers. These visions remained utopian, then as now, although some nations went further than others in attempting to implement ‘world peace’ and ‘social improvement’ through communications. Before widespread electrical transmissions, Americans created the blueprint for such utopian visions through mail steamers. Americans had long considered their postal system socially transformative; the development of mail steamers turned that social vision outwards to the globe. This article examines two movements of the 1850s that sought change through global communications: using mail steamers to resettle American free blacks in Africa and reducing international postage rates to such a low rate that increased communications would prevent war. These two nearly simultaneous histories suggest that the evolving concept of the nation-state deserves further investigation as an element at the conjuncture of global communications and social reform.

The success of Italian movements opposing the war in Iraq during the period 2003–2005 has awakened historians’ interest in the historical features of left-wing pacifism in Italy. Some particularly noteworthy contributions have focused on the campaigns orchestrated around 1950 by the Italian Committee of the Partisans of Peace (the international movement financed and supported by the USSR and international communism against Western anti-Soviet rearmaments). After describing the principal features of existing research, this article focuses on the lexical and communicative aspect characterising left-wing pacifism in Italy in the years immediately following the Atlantic Treaty. It highlights the way in which communist and socialist language gravitated towards the classist and anti-capitalist definitions of ‘war’ and ‘peace’, in line with the position developed in Lenin's reflections in Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. However, in the same context, there were images and symbolic references imbued with a rebuttal of the violence of war but with fewer ideological connotations, which reflected an attempt to attract the interest and support of groups and individuals ideologically distant from Marxism. This interweaving of choices of expression contributed to the deep-rooted influence of left-wing pacifism within Italian cultural politics.